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Sunday, July 11, 2010

On of my favorite books last year was Jamie Ford's "Hotel On The Corner Of Bitter And Sweet" which, in large part dealt with the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. It was certainly not the first time I had heard of the internment but it definitely opened my eyes as to the way the movement of these people was handled. And it was the first time I recalled reading a book that talked about this part of American history.
Then, just a few months later, I picked up Jean Davies Okimoto's "The Love Ceiling." The mother of the lead character, Anna, was Japanese and her family had been sent with other Seattle area Japanese Americans to an internment camp in Minidoka, Idaho, the same camp that the characters in "Bitter and Sweet" were sent to.

This is that camp. Can you even imagine what it felt like to come from verdant, wet Seattle to this? To say nothing of having to give up nearly everything that you owned, never to get it back? To be honest, given the fact that Russian spies were just found to have been living deep undercover in the U.S., I can somewhat understand why Americans would have been concerned that there might be some spies amongst the Japanese in America. But it is almost beyond comprehension that an entire population, nearly all innocent of any wrongdoing, would be stripped of nearly everything they own, sent hundreds of miles away from their homes and put into camps that were not nearly sufficient to handle the number of people they had to handle nor the climate in which they were located. Shameful.

Thanks to both of these authors for bringing this part of our history into the light.

13 comments:

Thanks for visiting my blog. When I read this post I was reminded that I bought Hotel on the Corner of Bitter & Sweet but my daughter borrowed it. I'm going to call her and have her bring it the next time she visits. Great post. A good reminder to all of what should never happen again. Looking at the photos makes me sad. There are no trees at the camp. I can't even imagine how frightened the Japanese Americans were.

I knew nothing about the internment camps before reading Snow Falling on Cedars about ten years ago. Can remember feeling horrified that something like that happened right here. It is important that these books are written and read...

I like the Hotel on the Corner of Bitter Sweet. I understand why people might have been afraid that the Japanese were spies but to sell these people's homes and everything they had without evidence was shameful. We don't do that to convicted felons.AnnCozy In Texas

We did the same here to Germans during WWII. Unfortunately we have echoes of similar themes running through Oz society today with our treatment of asylum seekers who come into Oz by boat.Humans are sometimes rally bad at being humane to one another.

Thank you for this review. I remember reading Snow Falling on Cedars which touches on the sameperiod of history. Distrust among people, especially in times of national crisis, creates such misery. My reference point is friendship through tutoring Japanese families here in England and my international friendship group from Japan, south Korea, China some of whom lived in America, but are a younger generation. My husband's brother was a POW in England during WWII. He was treated well and stayed on after the war. Through this brother I met my husband.

I haven't read much about internment camps during this period of history, but it does sound like a shameful situation from an American perspective. I have heard such good things about Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, but for some reason, I always get it mixed up with The Literary and Potato Peel Society. I think the covers may be sort of similar, but it never fails, I always get those two mixed up!

I've never heard of "Obasan," Anna. Add another one to the wish list! I guess I wasn't even aware that Japanese Canadians had also been subjected to internment. I love how much I'm learning from comments on these posts!

I once read a romance fiction that dealt with the same theme. I forgot the name of the book but Japanese internment was at its core. It was a shocking thing to read about. To hold the members of a community guilty of a decision they had no part in.

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